Home grown apfelwein question

A friend of mine just asked me if I would be interested in his apples. He has two diff varieties. He also has a press he could get a hold of.

My questions are, How do I prep the apples before pressing?

If they are eating apples what to add to make cider?

I plan on using the apfelwein recipe to finish this, but have never done this with fresh apples. Anything I really need to know about fermenting or processing fresh juice?

I've been thinking how cool it would be to make a cider from apples fresh out of the orchard. Even cooler would be to do a natural fermentation with just the yeast present on the fruit right out of the orchard, but I don't really think that's the thing for a beginner to start with.

I believe that if you can get a clean press and break the fruit up well first you could get a decent amount of juice into a carboy. To control the fermentation a bit I'd recommend using campden tablets to kill off the natural wild yeast and then waiting a couple days until pitching the cultured yeast of you liking.

Honestly, I wouldn't want to make ApfelWein using fresh local juice unless that was all I had to choose from. ApfelWein, as done per the recipe, really finishes out dry with a light flavor of apple. I may be wrong here, but I would want a recipe that doesn't finish quite as dry to showcase natural apple juice, particularly from a friend's orchard. I'd be inclined to use one of the dedicated liquid yeasts for cider from Wyeast or White Labs, and I'd use just the natural juice, without the added corn sugar, to really get a sense of the natural apple juice.

For all the time and effort of getting the apples juiced, you'd be better off just getting juice by the gallon off the shelf for Apfelwein if that's all you're looking to make.

YMMV.

good points about getting the most out of the apples. I have a few yeasts on hand and I don't want to mail order any. Out of notttingham, us05, danstar munich, or montrachet which would you think. Probably not the wine yeast as you think it might dry it out to much right?

Just started drinking an ApfelWein made with Red Star Cotes des Blanc and it finished at .006. It left enough sugar for a touch of sweetness and the apple flavor realy comes through. I used the two lbs. of corn surgar as per Ed's recipie and still have a little wine flavor from the high alcohol. My father also has two trees that are loaded this year and hard cider is on the list. I'm going to use 6 gal of fresh juice 1 lb. or less of sugar, campden for 48hrs and let it go with the Cotes des Blanc. I'm using 6 gal. because I'm sure I'll have to rack it a few times to get as much sediment out as possible. Good luck with yours and when mine is ready to drink (Dec?) I'll post the results.

Shawn

I imagine the Notty should leave some sugar behind, but you might want to give this thread a couple more days to see if someone with some real expertise on this chimes in...

wheres Edwort on this one? If anyone would know he would... found these:

how to build your own press


Step1
Allow cider apples to sweat for a week to ten days before grinding. This causes the sugar content to increase.
Step2
Wash apples to remove leaves, twigs, dirt and other debris before grinding.
Step3
Choose apples for your cider that provide a nice blend of flavors. A combination of sweet, acidic and astringent apples should be used.
Step4
Load apples into a grinder which crushes the apples into pulp. Do your blending of apples at this stage.
Step5
Place a load of pulp onto a press cloth and fold over. Repeat this process until you have many layers.
Step6
Apply pressure to the layers to begin the flow of juice. Pressing can take anywhere from a half an hour at a cider mill or overnight for a home press.
Step7
Store cider in sterilized containers. Most cider mill cider is not pasteurized and should be used within the amount of time listed on the bottle.